The present invention will be described for confirming the presence of at least one ring within a groove of a piston of a vehicle engine during assembly of the piston. However, the present invention may be used for confirming the presence of at least one ring within a groove of any type of article of manufacture during assembly of the article of manufacture, as would be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art from the description herein.
Referring to FIG. 1, a piston 100 is a common component of a vehicle engine, and the piston 100 typically has several types of rings assembled into grooves on the outside of the piston 100, as known to one of ordinary skill in the art of vehicle system design. For example, the piston 100 of FIG. 1 has a first compression ring 102 assembled into a first groove on the piston 100, a second compression ring 104 assembled into a second groove on the piston 100, and an oil ring assembly 106 assembled into a third groove on the piston 100.
FIG. 2 shows an enlarged view of the second compression ring 104 and the oil ring assembly 106 within the dashed box of FIG. 1. Referring to FIG. 2, the second compression ring 104 is one solid ring assembled into the second groove 108 on the piston 100. The oil ring assembly 106 includes three separates rings assembled into the third groove 110 on the piston 100. The oil ring assembly 106 includes a first scraper ring 112, a second scraper ring 114, and a separator ring 116 disposed between the first scraper ring 112 and the second scraper ring 114.
These rings 102, 104, 112, 114, and 116 are typically assembled into the grooves of the piston 110 manually, and an assembly line operator may mistakenly fail to assemble a ring to the piston 100. During further assembly of the piston and during assembly of the piston into a vehicle engine, the absence of one of the first compression ring 102 or the second compression ring 104 is relatively easy to determine visually. On the other hand, the absence of one of the first scraper ring 112, the second scraper ring 114, or the separator ring 116 of the oil ring assembly 106 is relatively hard to determine visually.
However, with the absence of any of these oil rings, the vehicle engine does not run properly. In addition, the absence of any these oil rings as the reason for improper operation of the vehicle engine is harder to determine once the vehicle engine is completely assembled. Furthermore, corrective action for the absence of any of these oil rings may be performed more easily if the absence of any these oil rings is detected during assembly of the piston and before the piston is assembled into the vehicle engine.
In light of the importance of the presence of all of the rings on the piston for proper operation of the vehicle engine, a mechanism is desired for automatically confirming the presence of all of at least one ring within a groove during assembly of the piston.